The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  “Don’t touch me,” Cade said. “I don’t want none of that brother love. Keep your distance.”

  “You behave,” Jesse said, struggling with his emotion.

  “Ever since you give up women and drinking you been picking on me,” Cade said. “I do the best I can.”

  Cade waited for Jesse to say something.

  “And you think picking on me all the time makes you get a star in heaven, I suppose,” Cade said weakly.

  Jesse, who was not listening, walked the length of the cramped little room. Because of the heat of the night and the heat of the discussion, he took off his shirt. On his chest was tattooed a crouched black panther, and on his right arm above his elbow a large unfolding flower.

  “I did want to do right by you, but maybe we had better part,” Jesse said, crossing his arms across his chest. He spoke like a man in his sleep, but immediately as he had spoken, a scared look passed over his face.

  Cade suddenly went white. He moved over to the window.

  I can’t do no more for you!” Jesse cried, alarmed but helpless at his own emotion. “It ain’t in me to do no more for you! Can’t you see that, Cade. Only so much, no more!”

  When there was no answer from Cade, Jesse said, “Do you hear what I say?”

  Cade did not speak.

  “Fact is,” Jesse began again, as though explaining now to himself, “I don’t seem to care about nothing. I just want somehow to sit and not move or do nothing. I don’t know what it is.”

  “You never did give a straw if I lived or died, Jesse,” Cade said, and he just managed to control his angry tears.

  Jesse was silent, as on the evenings when alone in the dark, while Cade was out looking for a job, he had tried to figure out what he should do in his trouble.

  “Fact is,” Cade now whirled from the window, his eyes brimming with tears, “it’s all the other way around. I don’t need you except for money, but you need me to tell you who you are!”

  “What?” Jesse said, thunderstruck.

  “You know goddam well what,” Cade said, and he wiped the tears off his face with his fist. “On account of you don’t know who you are, that’s why.”

  “You little crumb,” Jesse began, and he moved threateningly, but then half remembering his nights at the Mission, he walked around the room, muttering.

  “Where are my cigarettes?” Jesse said suddenly. “Did you take them?”

  “I thought you swore off when you got religion,” Cade said.

  “Yesh,” Jesse said in the tone of voice more like his old self, and he went up to Cade, who was smoking another butt.

  “Give me your smoke,” he said to Cade.

  Cade passed it to him, staring.

  “I don’t think you heard what I said about leaving,” Cade told Jesse.

  “I heard you,” Jesse said.

  “Well, I’m going to leave you, Jesse. God damn you.”

  Jesse just nodded from where he now sat on a crate they used as a chair. He groaned a little like the smoke was disagreeable for him.

  “Like I say, Jesse,” and Cade’s face was dry of tears now. “It may be hard for me to earn money, but I know who I am. I may be dumb, but I’m all together!”

  “Cade,” Jesse said sucking on the cigarette furiously. “I didn’t mean for you to go. After all, there is a lot between us.”

  Jesse’s fingers moved nervously over the last tiny fragment of the cigarette.

  “Do you have any more smokes in your pants cuff or anywhere?” Jesse asked, as though he were the younger and the weaker of the two now.

  “I have, but I don’t think I should give any to a religious man,” Cade replied.

  Jesse tightened his mouth.

  Cade handed him another of the butts.

  “What are you going to offer me, if I do decide to stay,” Cade said suddenly. “On account of this time I’m not going to stay if you don’t give me an offer!”

  Jesse stood up suddenly, dropping his cigarette, the smoke coming out of his mouth as though he had all gone to smoke inside himself.

  “What am I going to offer you?” Jesse said like a man in a dream. “What?” he said sleepily.

  Then waving his arms, Jesse cried, “All right! Get out!”

  And suddenly letting go at last he struck Cade across the mouth, bringing some blood. “Now you git,” he said. “Git out.”

  Jesse panted, walking around the room. “You been bleedin’ me white for a year. That’s the reason I’m the way I am. I’m bled white.”

  Cade went mechanically to the bureau, took out a shirt, a pair of shorts, a toothbrush, his straight razor, and a small red box. He put these in a small bag such as an athlete might carry to his gym. He walked over to the door and went out.

  Below, on the sidewalk, directly under the room where he and Jesse had lived together a year, Cade stood waiting for the streetcar. He knew Jesse was looking down on him. He did not have to wait long.

  “Cade,” Jesse’s voice came from the window. “You get back here, Cade, goddamn you.” Jesse hearing the first of his profanity let loose at last, swore a lot more then, as though he had found his mind again in swearing.

  A streetcar stopped at that moment.

  “Don’t get on that car, Cade,” Jesse cried. “Goddam it.”

  Cade affected impatience.

  “You wait now, goddam you,” Jesse said putting on his rose-colored shirt.

  “Cade,” Jesse began when he was on the street beside his friend. “Let’s go somewhere and talk this over. . . . See how I am,” he pointed to his trembling arm.

  “There ain’t nowhere to go since you give up drinking,” Cade told him.

  Jesse took Cade’s bag for him.

  “Well if it makes you unhappy, I’ll drink with you,” Jesse said.

  “I don’t mind being unhappy,” Cade said. “it’s you that minds, Jesse.”

  “I want you to forgive me, Cade,” Jesse said, putting his hand on Cade’s arm.

  Cade allowed Jesse’s arm to rest there.

  “Well, Jesse,” Cade said coldly.

  “You see,” Jesse began, pulling Cade gently along with him as they walked toward a tavern. “You see, I don’t know what it is, Cade, but you know everything.”

  Cade watched him.

  They went into the tavern and although they usually sat at the bar, today they chose a table. They ordered beer.

  “You see, Cade, I’ve lied to you, I think, and you’re right. Of course your brother did save my life, but you saved it again. I mean you saved it more. You saved me,” and he stretched out his trembling arm at Cade.

  Jesse seeing the impassive look on Cade’s face stopped and then going on as though he did not care whether anybody heard him or not, he said: “You’re all I’ve got, Cade.”

  Cade was going to say all right now but Jesse went on speaking frantically and fluently as he had never spoken before. “You know ever since the war, I’ve been like I am . . . And Cade, I need you that’s why . . . I know you don’t need me,” he nodded like an old man now. “But I don’t care now. I ain’t proud no more about it.”

  Jesse stopped talking and a globule of spit rested thickly on his mouth.

  “I’m cured of being proud, Cade.”

  “Well, all right then,” Cade finally said, folding his arms and compressing his mouth.

  “All right?” Jesse said, a silly look on his face, which had turned very young again.

  “But you leave me alone now if I stay,” Cade said.

  “I will,” Jesse said, perhaps not quite sure what it was Cade meant. “You can do anything you want, Cade. All I need is to know you won’t really run out. No matter what I might some day say or do, you stay, Cade!”

  “Then I don’t want to hear no more about me getting just any old job,” Cade said, drinking a swallow of beer.

  “All right,” Jesse said. “All right, all right.”

  “And you quit going to that old Mission and listening to that religious
talk.’”

  Jesse nodded.

  “I ain’t living with no old religious fanatic,” Cade said.

  Jesse nodded again.

  “And there ain’t no reason we should give up drinking and all the rest of it at night.”

  Jesse agreed.

  “Or women,” Cade said, and he fumbled now with the button of his shirt. It was such a very hot night his hand almost unconsciously pushed back the last button which had held his shirt together, exposing the section of his chest on which rested the tattooed drawing of a crouched black panther, the identical of Jesse’s.

  “And I don’t want to hear no more about me going to work at all for a while,” Cade was emphatic.

  “All right, then, Cade,” Jesse grinned, beginning to giggle and laugh now.

  “Well I should say all right,” Cade replied, and he smiled briefly, as he accepted Jesse’s hand which Jesse proffered him then by standing up.

  DADDY WOLF

  You aren’t the first man to ask me what I am doing so long in the phone booth with the door to my flat open and all. Let me explain something, or if you want to use the phone, I’ll step out for a minute, but I am trying to get Operator to re-connect me with a party she just cut me off from. If you’re not in a big hurry would you let me just try to get my party again.

  See I been home 2 days now just looking at them 2 or 3 holes in the linoleum in my flat, and those holes are so goddam big now—you can go in there and take a look—those holes are so goddam big that I bet my kid, if he was still here, could almost put his leg through the biggest one.

  Maybe of course the rats don’t use the linoleum holes as entrances or exits. They could come through the calcimine in the wall. But I kind of guess and I bet the super for once would back me up on this, the rats are using the linoleum holes. Otherwise what is the meaning of the little black specks in and near each hole in the linoleum. I don’t see how you could ignore the black specks there. If they were using the wall holes you would expect black specks there, but I haven’t found a single one.

  The party I was just talking to on the phone when I got cut off was surprised when I told her how the other night after my wife and kid left me I came in to find myself staring right head-on at a fat, I guess a Mama rat, eating some of my uncooked cream of wheat. I was so took by surprise that I did not see which way she went out. She ran, is all I can say, the minute I come into the room.

  I HAD NO more snapped back from seeing the Mama rat when a teeny baby one run right between my legs and disappeared ditto.

  I just stood looking at my uncooked cream of wheat knowing I would have to let it go to waste.

  It was too late that evening to call the super or anybody and I know from a lot of sad experience how sympathetic he would be, for the rats, to quote him, is a un-avoidable probability for whatever party decides to rent one of these you-know-what linoleum apartments.

  If you want something better than some old you-know-what linoleum-floor apartments, the super says, you got the map of Newyorkcity to hunt with.

  Rats and linoleum go together, and when you bellyache about rats, remember you’re living on linoleum.

  I always have to go to the hall phone when I get in one of these states, but tonight instead of calling the super who has gone off by now anyhow to his night job (he holds 2 jobs on account of, he says, the high cost of chicken and peas), I took the name of the first party my finger fell on in the telephone book.

  This lady answered the wire.

  I explained to her the state I was in, and that I was over in one of the linoleum apartments and my wife and kid left me.

  She cleared her throat and so on.

  Even for a veteran, I told her, this is rough.

  She kind of nodded over the phone in her manner.

  I could feel she was sort of half-friendly, and I told her how I had picked her name out from all the others in the telephone book.

  It was rough enough, I explained to her, to be renting an apartment in the linoleum district and to not know nobody in Newyorkcity, and then only the other night after my wife and kid left me this Mama rat was in here eating my uncooked cream of wheat, and before I get over this, her offspring run right between my legs.

  This lady on the wire seemed to say I see every so often but I couldn’t be sure on account of I was talking so fast myself.

  I would have called the super of the building, I explained to her, in an emergency like this, but he has 2 jobs, and as it is after midnight now he is on his night job. But it would be just as bad in the daytime as then usually he is out inspecting the other linoleum apartments or catching up on his beauty sleep and don’t answer the door or phone.

  When I first moved into this building, I told her, I had to pinch myself to be sure I was actually seeing it right. I seen all the dirt before I moved in, but once I was in, I really seen: all the traces of the ones who had been here before, people who had died or lost their jobs or found they was the wrong race or something and had had to vacate all of a sudden before they could clean the place up for the next tenant. A lot of them left in such a hurry they just give you a present of some of their belongings and underwear along with their dirt. But then after one party left in such a hurry, somebody else from somewhere moved in, found he could not make it in Newyorkcity, and lit out somewhere or maybe was taken to a hospital in a serious condition and never returned.

  I moved in just like the others on the linoleum.

  Wish you could have seen it then. Holes everywhere and that most jagged of the holes I can see clear over here from the phone booth is where the Mama rat come through, which seems now about 3,000 years ago to me.

  I told the lady on the phone how polite she was to go on listening and I hoped I was not keeping her up beyond her bedtime or from having a nightcap before she did turn in.

  I don’t object to animals, see. If it had been a Mama bird, say, which had come out of the hole, I would have had a start, too, as a Mama bird seldom is about and around at that hour, not to mention it not nesting in a linoleum hole, but I think I feel the way I do just because you think of rats along with neglect and lonesomeness and not having nobody near or around you.

  See my wife left me and took our kid with her. They could not take any more of Newyorkcity. My wife was very scared of disease, and she had heard the radio in a shoe-repair store telling that they were going to raise the V.D. rate, and she said to me just a few hours before she left, I don’t think I am going to stay on here, Benny, if they are going to have one of them health epidemics. She didn’t have a disease, but she felt she would if the city officials were bent on raising the V.D. rate. She said it would be her luck and she would be no exception to prove the rule. She packed and left with the kid.

  Did I feel sunk with them gone, but Jesus it was all I could do to keep on here myself. A good number of times at night I did not share my cream of wheat with them. I told them to prepare what kind of food they had a yen for and let me eat my cream of wheat alone with a piece of warmed-over oleo and just a sprinkle of brown sugar on that.

  My wife and kid would stand and watch me eat the cream of wheat, but they was entirely indifferent to food. I think it was partly due to the holes in the linoleum, and them knowing what was under the holes of course.

  We have only the one chair in the flat, and so my kid never had any place to sit when I was to home.

  I couldn’t help telling this party on the phone then about my wife and Daddy Wolf.

  I was the one who told my wife about Daddy Wolf and the Trouble Phone in the first place, but at first she said she didn’t want any old charity no matter if it was money or advice or just encouraging words.

  Then when thing got so rough, my wife did call Daddy Wolf. I think the number is Crack 8-7869 or something like that, and only ladies can call. You phone this number and say Daddy Wolf, I am a lady in terrible trouble. I am in one of the linoleum apartments, and just don’t feel I can go on another day. Mama rats are coming in and out of their h
oles with their babies, and all we have had to eat in a month is cream of wheat.

  Daddy Wolf would say he was listening and to go on, and then he would ask her if she was employed anywhere.

  Daddy Wolf, yes and no. I just do not seem to have the willpower to go out job-hunting any more or on these house-to-house canvassing jobs that I have been holding down lately, and if you could see this linoleum flat, I think you would agree, Daddy Wolf, that there is very little incentive for me and Benny.

  Then my wife would go on about how surprised we had both been, though she was the only one surprised, over the high rate of V.D. in Newyorkcity.

  You see, Daddy Wolf, I don’t hold a thing back, I have been about with older men in order to tide my husband over this rough financial situation we’re in. My husband works in the mitten factory, and he just is not making enough for the three of us to live on. He has to have his cream of wheat at night or he would not have the strength to go back to his day-shift, and our linoleum apartment costs 30 smackers a week.

  I leave the kid alone here and go out to try and find work, Daddy Wolf, but I’m telling you, the only job I can find for a woman of my education and background is this house-to-house canvassing of Queen Bee royal jelly which makes older women look so much more appealing, but I hardly sell more than a single jar a day and am on my feet 12 hours at a stretch.

  The kid is glad when I go out to sell as he can have the chair to himself then. You see when I and his Daddy are home he either has to sit down on my lap, if I am sitting, or if his Daddy is sitting, just stand because I won’t allow a little fellow like him to sit on that linoleum, it’s not safe, and his Daddy will not let him sit on his lap because he is too dead-tired from the mitten factory.

  That was the way she explained to Daddy Wolf on the Trouble Phone, and that went on every night, night after night, until she left me.

  Daddy Wolf always listened, I will give him credit for that. He advised Mabel too: go to Sunday school and church and quit going up to strange men’s hotel rooms. Devote yourself only to your husband’s need, and you don’t ever have to fear the rise in the V.D. rate.